


A Case of You

by sistermichael



Category: What We Do in the Shadows (TV)
Genre: Alcohol, Blood Drinking, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Commensal politics, Demisexuality, Guillermo POV, Hand Jobs, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Intimacy, M/M, Pining, Rituals, Season/Series 02, Tenderness, Underage Drinking, ptsd mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-09
Updated: 2020-09-09
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:14:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26368525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sistermichael/pseuds/sistermichael
Summary: Nandor knows you shouldn’t drink alone. Guillermo obliges.(Commensal politics throughout Guillermo’s tenure as a familiar, including four-dollar Cab Sav, eleven years of half-truths, and what exactly happens when a vampire bites you.)
Relationships: Guillermo de la Cruz/Nandor the Relentless
Comments: 24
Kudos: 115





	A Case of You

**Author's Note:**

> While there is not explicit alcoholism in this story, there is regular, ritualized drinking that can be read, if you choose, as a coping mechanism. 
> 
> “Salud” = “cheers” in Spanish (literally “health”). 
> 
> The title of this story is, of course, shamelessly lifted from Joni Mitchell's song of the same name. 
> 
> Thanks, as ever and in perpetuity, to the Nandermo discord.

When it begins, Guillermo is rather under the legal age of alcohol consumption. He—nineteen, shaking, and feeling the PTSD developing apace—lures a weird incel to Nandor’s doorstep by mumbling some things about women being bitches; Nandor, answering the door in full battle dress, apparently passes European incel muster (Guillermo doesn’t know enough to distinguish incels and White Power, and he suspects that Venn diagram is basically a circle anyway) and before long the guy is sprawled out on a sofa in the fancy room ranting at length about the superiority of his misunderstood penis. Nandor gently—almost tenderly, in fact—leans over the guy’s neck and sink his fangs in, mercifully interrupting a bizarre, half-shouted paean to Alex Jones.

And then, mid-drink, he looks up at Guillermo. The ensuing eye contact is, objectively speaking, marvelous beyond Guillermo’s wildest fantasies—his new master’s eyes, dark and seeking and euphoric, locking with Guillermo’s own amid muffled, pleased murmurs against the victim's neck. 

“Bitter,” murmurs Nandor afterwards, sprawled out on the couch and pointing aimlessly at the ceiling. Something _Interview with the Vampire_ failed to tell thirteen-year-old Guillermo was that feeding makes vampires a little come-dumb in the aftermath. “Too much misogyny.”

Guillermo bites back some choice remarks at that one and merely strategically crosses his legs to hide the evidence of what exactly watching his master erotically sink his teeth into a warm, male neck does to him.

“What would you prefer?” he asks instead.

Nandor considers. “You know, I’ve sampled nearly every flavor of virgin…and they all have their drawbacks, really. Nuns are scary, gamers aren’t nutritious, and Mormons have some questionable beliefs about people of color.”

“Right,” says Guillermo, who’s still trying to recover from the fact that his sexy, dumb, seven-hundred-and-fifty-year-old boss knows the phrase “people of color.”

Nandor lets an arm flop off the side of the sofa and deepens his sprawl into what looks to be a magnificent food coma. “The key is to find people who have abstained from sex because they don’t want to have sex, not because they resent the people who do.”

“Asexuals,” supplies Guillermo, who’s had a Tumblr account for longer than he cares to admit.

Nandor flops an arm vaguely in his direction. “Sure.”

“I’ll get on it,” Guillermo says, when really what he wants to say is “I’ve never wanted to have sex with anyone before I met you.”

“Please do,” says Nandor, and promptly dozes off.

*

Guillermo de la Cruz, purveyor of virgins and the virgin-adjacent, devoutly scouts cosplay conventions, attends chastity club meetings, and LARPs with the best of them. (He learns a rather lot about ornithology and enjoys it, but the birding club eventually has to be dissolved because too many of its members disappear under mysterious circumstances). And then, rooted to the same spot on the carpet in the fancy room, he watches trembling as his master nuzzles into the necks of his offerings, biting and whimpering until he’s had his fill. In the aftermath, blissed-out and sleepy, Nandor comments on his meal with clockwork regularity—too salty, weird aftertaste, gives him food poisoning, not actually a virgin in spite of repeated avowals to that effect. Guillermo merely watches. 

Finally, a year into Guillermo’s servitude, Nandor snaps.

“Stop staring!” he hisses from his position on the sofa, blood trickling down his chin. The victim—a very successful young computer programmer who plays disc golf on the weekends-- moans faintly. “ _Not now!”_ Nandor chastises, sparing a disparaging glance downward. Guillermo tries to shrink further into his corner. Nandor rolls his eyes.

“If you’re going to watch me drink, at least drink with me.” And he goes back to feeding as if he’s just made the most natural comment in the world.

Fortunately for Guillermo, Jeremy’s just turned twenty-one and can be prevailed upon to procure 7-Eleven’s finest four-dollar cabernet sauvignon. The bottle’s got a demented-looking owl on it, but a drink is a drink. Guillermo sits on the sofa across the coffee table from Nandor and carefully pours what he thinks is an appropriate amount of wine into a giant crystal goblet that he dredged up from the cellar.

“Oh, come on, do it like you mean it,” gripes Nandor, rolling his eyes at the goblet. Guillermo pours more, trying to look like the sort of suave person that actually knows what a cabernet sauvignon is and drinks it on the regular.

It’s probably for the best that libations are involved, because a year of watching his master cradle victims to him on the sofa and tenderly sink his teeth into their necks has not exactly been kind to Guillermo’s poor heart.

“You’ve had alcohol before, right?” Nandor asks, eyes doubtfully searching Guillermo face.

“Of course!” scoffs Guillermo, but what he actually means is that a cool uncle once chucked him a Modelo at a quinceañera and Guillermo drank it far too slowly to feel any effect. He pours more cab sav. It starts frothing up wildly, which judging by the look on Nandor’s face is not what it’s supposed to do. 

“Right,” says Nandor dubiously. His eyes take a long time to slide away from Guillermo’s, but when they do, it’s to sweep appraisingly up and down the victim he’s practically spooning on the sofa. Guillermo stares determinedly at his goblet, the firelight glinting off it.

“Well?” says Nandor impatiently, sliding a hand under the victim’s neck and considering the angle.

Guillermo rolls his eyes and raises his glass. “ _Salud_.” And he drinks.

It’s like expensive grape juice punched him in the sinuses, but he rolls with it. He’s a grownup. A sophisticated grownup drinking wine on a spindly old sofa, watching over the rim of his glass as his seven-hundred-and-fifty-year-old master basically makes out with someone’s neck while moaning softly. It’s not like it’s a crushing reminder of his own humanity and inexperience or anything. Far from it. 

Fifteen minutes later, he realizes he’s made a terrible mistake when nothing is the distance away his eyes are insisting it is, and the room is sort of faintly throbbing, and he’s wondering whether he could possibly card his fingers tenderly through Nandor the Relentless’ positively luxurious hair.

“I knew it!” grumps Nandor from somewhere far in the distance. There’s a thud that Guillermo faintly recognizes as a dead body hitting the floor (hello, nascent PTSD) and the swish of far too many expensive ancient layers in his peripheral vision.

“You can’t handle your alcohol,” says Nandor flatly from very close by, which Guillermo deduces means his master has actually sunk to his knees next to the sofa.

“Can too,” he mutters, but then he ruins the whole thing by outright _moaning_ when Nandor brings a massive hand up to cradle the back of Guillermo’s head.

“Cannot,” Nandor says firmly. Maybe it’s the alcohol and/or the wishful thinking, but Guillermo could swear through his swill-induced haze that Nandor is in fact _smiling_ , his eyes gleaming with a sparkle greater than that the firelight alone could lend them. “Do you think I have not seen it before? Young soldiers, giddy with victory and flush with coin in the local tavern? Fraternity boys stumbling down New Dorp Avenue after the New York Jets clinch a victory in—” He squints in concentration, seemingly trying to peer into the ether. “Baseball?”

“Football,” sighs Guillermo.

“But they don’t use their feet.”

“Shut up. Typical Old World superiority complex.” He waggles a very uncoordinated finger at Nandor.

Things get a little hazy after that. Guillermo knows that he probably does more than his fair share of unabashed staring at his master’s lips; he possibly trails a fingertip down the edge of Nandor’s cloak. Afterward, he has no way of knowing what exactly he let slip, but when he wakes to watery light sloshing through the stained-glass windows and a truly spectacular hangover, there’s a pillow under his head and a Gatorade next to the empty goblet.

*

He wises up a bit after that. Mostly with regards to the fact that the last time Nandor drank alcohol he was attempting to straight-up use it as an anesthetic and that one glass will do Guillermo just fine. He doesn’t repeat his sins of the first time again. In fact, it’s downright civilized: snowy evenings in front of the fire, Nandor murmuring gently into a soft neck, Guillermo sipping something grape-adjacent. Cozy. Nice. Almost, if you squint, companionable.

It’s not every time—sometimes Guillermo just tosses a squalling Crossfitter in Nandor’s direction and Nandor disappears into the cell to take care of business. But on the nights that are slow and calm and populated by victims who think they’re in for some kinky sex, the two of them relax in the fancy room and sip together. Guillermo’s got a full-on wine rack going in the dusty, oft-used kitchen. His twenty-first birthday comes and goes and he Googles a thing or two about alcohol, adds a whiskey and a few bourbons to the mix. (Every so often, Laszlo hypnotizes the Powerball people into drawing the numbers on his ticket, which sets the household up quite nicely for a spell, though Guillermo has had to learn a fair bit more about shell companies and offshore bank accounts than he ever cared to).

Most of the time, Guillermo’s a lowly, groveling servant. But once he and Nandor the Relentless post up in the fancy room with their libations of choice, things grow a bit more hazy. Nandor makes soft, intimate noises against the necks of his victims; Guillermo muses that he should really look more into Napa reds. The fire crackles; the two of them laze indolent on their respective sofas. Guillermo compartmentalizes furiously re: the whole murder thing and gets lost in the way his master’s eyelashes flutter as he drifts a bit in the wake of a really good drink. Sometimes he fancies that Nandor watches him in the same way, noting Guillermo’s appreciative outbreath at a nice pinot or grimace at a questionable whiskey. And then Guillermo put his master to coffin and stumbles into his own depressing cot under the stairs and feels the alcohol ebb slowly out of his veins with the breaking dawn. Sometimes there’s some sad, surreptitious masturbation, but mostly he feels the intoxication go out like the tide, gingerly prods the edges of his melancholy and decides it’s not worth interrogating further, and falls asleep.

*

“No,” slurs Nandor one night, his meal hitting the floor with a thud.

“Why not?” asks Guillermo, because he’s hit his mid-twenties and is having a bit of an identity crisis and may or may not be trying to solve that with absinthe and hard questions.

“Because,” Nandor insists, groping aimlessly for the body that’s now somewhere under the sofa. “You don’t shit where you eat.”

“You’re not shitting where you eat, you’re eating where you eat.” Guillermo furrows his brow. That didn’t sound particularly right. 

Nandor hauls himself up on an elbow. “Are you seriously asking me to drink your blood? After all these years of watching this _shit?”_ he gestures expansively at where he thinks the victim is, though he’s off by a sizeable distance.

“ _Especially_ after years of watching ‘this shit,’” counters Guillermo, putting down his glass for the sole purpose of using aggressive air quotes. He’s seen the way that victims shiver and moan and smile faintly, and dammit, he wants in. Realistically he’s wanted in since his middle-school self watched a bootlegged Spanish-language dub of _Interview with the Vampire_ while his mom was at work, but Nandor doesn’t need to know that. “I don’t want you to drink me enough to kill me, obviously. Just enough to…uh, make an impression.”

“No, and that’s final!” Nandor hugs a throw pillow to his chest. “As your master, I command you to never bring this up again.”

“What if I told you I was a virgin?” says Guillermo slyly, deciding that if there was ever a time to show every damn card in his hand, it’s this one.

Nandor lets out an agonized groan and throws the pillow at Guillermo’s head.

*

The documentary crew’s arrival on the scene changes things a bit. By silent, mutual agreement Nandor and Guillermo decide that they don’t really want their weird-ass happy hours on tape, so Nandor lugs victims to the cell in silence and Guillermo pretends to know nothing. They were already compartmentalizing, really—the Nandor who snipes at Guillermo about disturbing spiderwebs in the chandelier isn’t the same Nandor who kicks off his boots with a groan and asks from the depths of his food coma if Guillermo could please explain “the Shakira”; the Guillermo who trembles before his master’s insensible rage is not the same Guillermo who brings up “Hips Don’t Lie” on his phone and plays it at full blast to an enthralled medieval vampire. Of course, when you drill down into it they are the same, because it’s _them_. But for those quiet evenings they push all that aside and just have a drink together. As these evenings grow rarer in the face of the documentary crew’s inroads, they grow more precious.

Over the years, Guillermo’s run through every conceivable fantasy in this scenario, many times and with much embroidery. It’s become a sort of choose-your-own-adventure, conducted as he peers over the rim of his glass at Nandor mouthing pornographically at his latest meal’s neck. Sometimes in these fantasies Nandor comes over to Guillermo’s sofa and kneels before him; sometimes, it’s Guillermo’s feet that move across the rug of their own volition, his master’s arms coming up to draw his familiar in close. Guillermo’s like Scheherazade, spinning a thousand tales over a thousand nights of all the ways he wants this to go. And, invariably, it never does go. He takes his glass to the kitchen sink and helps Nandor into his coffin and it’s always the same damn thing, over and over, year after year.

*

But then the slaying starts. Assassins are falling from the ceilings, disco cults are chasing Guillermo down dark hallways, and his whole life becomes a whirlwind of blood and fear and exhaustion. He sits on his designated sofa with a glass in his hand, staring into space; he’s back to being nineteen, unable to finish a drink without taking an involuntary snooze. Nandor notices, of course; he’s only thick as a board when it suits him. The mysteriously-appearing Gatorades, long having receded into the mists of Guillermo’s indiscreet past, start materializing on the side table again. The ritual of sitting down together starts to feel simultaneously precious and farcical, a charade that can only hold for so long against the inescapable truths trying to batter down the door. Sometimes Guillermo pours himself a Cuba Libre with hands crusted in vampire blood; sometimes he has to frantically kick stakes under the couch as he sits down. He’s clinging, desperately, to this last vestige of normalcy—or, what passes for normalcy in this fucked-up, serial-killerish, supernatural bullshit world that he’s come to love so fiercely.

*

“Vampire killings,” says Nandor softly one evening. Guillermo suspects that tonight’s victim had been partaking in the devil’s lettuce prior to their exsanguination, judging by the way Nandor sighs and plays with the tassels on the throw pillows and generally keeps losing track of the conversation in a very stoned way.

“What about them?” Guillermo asks from the sideboard. (Yes, he’s got a sideboard now. The kitchen is too damn far away when it’s 4 a.m. in the winter).

“I’ve been hearing rumors.”

“What rumors are those?” Guillermo sets his drink down and starts flipping through Laszlo and Nadja’s ample record collection for something to put on the Victrola.

“That there are vampire hunters on the loose in Staten Island.”

The victim has long been dispatched to the cell half-drunk; Nandor had muttered something offhanded about snacking too much early in the evening to really want a proper meal. It’s just the two of them; it’s almost intimate in the absence of the usual body lolling lifeless on the floor.

“Where did you hear that?”

“Here and there,” Nandor says evasively.

“No one’s going to hurt you,” Guillermo reassures him firmly, pulling a Joni Mitchell record out of the box. (What? He’s always had a weakness.)

“Have you heard about these slayers? Is there discourse among the familiars?”

“You seriously overestimate the intellectual prowess of the familiar mixers,” Guillermo deflects, setting the record in the Victrola and resting the needle gently on top. It crackles to life.

 _“_ _Oh, you are in my blood like holy wine_ _  
You taste so bitter  
And so sweet, oh  
I could drink a case of you, darling, and I would  
Still be on my feet.”_

Guillermo sits, swirling his glass around and beginning to regret his song choice.

“Still, though.” Nandor pokes desultorily at the fire. “One worries.”

“By ‘one,’ you mean you?” prods Guillermo.

“Obviously,” snarks Nandor, flopping back onto the sofa. “I don’t know where they’re coming from or what they hope to accomplish by killing me.”

“You haven’t encountered this before?”

“I’ve been on this immortal plane for seven hundred and fifty years. I’ve encountered more bullshit than you ever could dream of.”

“So you’ve fought off vampire hunters.”

“On every continent.”

Guillermo stops mid-sip, impressed. “Even Antarctica?”

“What’s an Antarctica?”

Guillermo resumes drinking apace.

*

They return home after Celeste’s failed orgy and go straight to the fancy room, Guillermo still shaking wildly as he pours himself a Pinot. He sheds the stupid yellow bathrobe; Nandor makes to pitch it into the fire but Guillermo stops him at the last second with some halfhearted excuse about aerosolized toxins from whatever plastics they’re putting in textiles these days.

“I want one more thing,” says Guillermo, tossing the rescued robe over the pianoforte. It only takes Nandor a split second to clock the look on Guillermo’s face and make a very educated guess as to what that thing might be.

“I ate already,” fibs Nandor, flamingly and unabashedly.

“You most certainly did not.”

“I might hurt you.”

“You won’t.”

“I feel like it’s not healthy for you to emotionally blackmail me like this!” whines Nandor.

Guillermo wheels around. “What exactly about the last eleven years has been _healthy_ for me? And come to think of it, what about the last _seven hundred and fifty years_ has been healthy for you, exactly?” He sits down forcefully on Nandor’s sofa. It feels wrong, heady; usually he’s sitting on the other one, watching warily and longingly across the rim of a glass as someone else’s neck gets fondled. He’s hyperaware of the way that his sweater is thinner and clingier than what he usually wears; Celeste had put some sort of weird, possibly-CBD-infused pomade in his hair and while he’s not entirely sure that it’s his style, it’s definitely having some sort of emboldening effect.

“You’ve always wanted this. I’ve always wanted this.” Guillermo feels wild with it, this deliberate shattering of eleven years of carefully-constructed rituals.

“The turtleneck’s in the way,” says Nandor, softly and very, very lamely. He dips down onto the sofa next to Guillermo and raises a hand to brush his fingertips along the place where collar meets skin. Guillermo shivers. It might just be the first non-functional touch in eleven long years, though he supposes that depends on whether a séance is considered functional.

“That’s easily fixed,” breathes Guillermo right back.

“I don’t understand why you want this.” Nandor’s hand moves up, fingers brushing through the waves of Guillermo’s hair. The touch makes Guillermo shudder.

“Me neither.”

“That sounds extremely healthy.”

“Shut up and bite me.”

There’s maneuvering involved. Guillermo suspects Nandor isn’t usually this conscientious with his victims (scratch that, eleven years and he’s pretty damn sure.) Guillermo puts more Joni Mitchell on the Victrola and pours himself another glass of wine; Nandor stokes the fire and putters around with zero idea what to do with his hands. They end up sitting tucked into the corner of the couch, Nandor leaning back against the pillows and Guillermo leaning back against Nandor’s chest. Nandor hugs Guillermo from behind as Guillermo drinks, face buried in the juncture of Guillermo’s shoulder and neck. Apparently Guillermo’s not the one feeling the sense of finality, that ten years of them wearing butt-prints into their respective sofas night after night is coming inexorably to an end. He finishes his drink and sets the glass on the coffee table. He doesn’t use a coaster, which by his standards already constitutes a wild night.

Nandor’s hands are immediately at the hem of the stupid orgy sweater; Guillermo swallows and nods his consent. He shuts his eyes as they work it off him together; every brush of his master’s fingertips against Guillermo’s poor touch-starved skin makes him break out in goosebumps. If Nandor notices, he doesn’t say anything, just pitches the sweater in the direction of the fireplace.

“It’s a nice sweater, please don’t try to burn it,” Guillermo manages to get out, strangled. He doesn’t open his eyes, though.

“I wasn’t trying to burn it.”

“Were too.”

Nandor splays a massive hand across Guillermo’s belly, holding him steady as Nandor twists around on the sofa, apparently looking for something. Under other circumstances Guillermo might ask what Nandor’s looking for, but at the moment all of his usual thinking bits have apparently scampered in light of the fact that everything in his universe has boiled down to the gentle hand steadying him, skin on skin. He’s never been this close to someone; he’s never had someone’s hands on him like this, bare and gentle, and it’s undoing him, slowly but inescapably. At length, Nandor returns from practically yeeting himself across the back of the sofa and presses something into Guillermo’s hand. 

“Just in case,” he murmurs into Guillermo’s naked shoulder, fingers sliding across Guillermo’s own as they let go of the stake. They trail up Guillermo’s arm, then ghost over Guillermo’s chest on their way to cradle his jaw.

“Lay back,” Nandor whispers, tilting Guillermo’s head experimentally. Guillermo, clutching the stake in shaking hands, obeys. Nandor’s other arm comes up to wrap around his midsection; his lips ghost across Guillermo’s neck, a flicker of tongue here and there.

“Last chance to call this off,” he husks, the notes of gustatory desire that Guillermo recognizes intimately already creeping into his voice.

“Do it.”

Nandor sinks his teeth in.

At first it just _hurts_ , sharp and tearing and awful and ringing every single alarm bell Guillermo’s reptilian brain possesses. He jerks and moans in Nandor’s grasp, white-knuckling the stake and clinging frantically to what’s left of his rational self amid the avalanche of pain. Nandor strokes his side, tender, but doesn’t relent.

And then it gets better. Markedly better. So markedly better, in fact, that Guillermo is only marginally aware of what’s happening on the logistical plane.

“Feels good,” he moans, because it _does_ , a wild sweep of giddy arousal overtaking him and dragging him sweetly under. Maybe it’s the blood loss; maybe it’s some freaky vampire saliva aphrodisiac. At this juncture, Guillermo doesn’t necessarily care. Nandor whines throatily into Guillermo’s neck, hands clenching and releasing helplessly against Guillermo’s body even as he holds Guillermo steady against himself.

Guillermo isn’t entirely sure when it devolves to such, but at length his hips are jerking of their own volition and Nandor is sliding a hand down to assist. He whimpers and writhes as his master, at long last, takes him in hand and guides him through it. It’s gentle, shockingly so, and that’s probably what is ultimately Guillermo’s undoing.

Things get ever-fuzzier after he comes; he’s aware of Nandor gently disentangling his fangs and the stake clattering to the floor. He’s aware of Nandor pressing a hand to the wound on his neck and whispering something unintelligible, the al-Quolnadarese evidently swimming back up to the surface after all these years. And he’s aware of a blossoming sadness, tears pricking the corners of his eyes even as the post-orgasmic hormones flood his body. He suspects the wetness against trickling down his shoulder is much of the same.

*

It’s quiet afterwards. They end up horizontal, cuddled up together on the godawful narrow sofa watching the fire die down, the light flickering on the empty wine glass on the table.

“I don’t know if I get to keep you,” says Nandor quietly into Guillermo’s sweat-damp hair.

“I don’t know if _I_ get to keep _you_ ,” murmurs Guillermo back, drowsy and sad and increasingly feeling the effects of the wine now that he’s got notably less blood in his body.

“That first time,” begins Nandor. Then he stops.

“Ten years ago,” prompts Guillermo hazily.

“I think you let slip more than you meant to.”

Guillermo’s face burns. “I don’t doubt it.” There’s silence. “I take that to mean that it was obvious I wanted you.”

“Duh.”

“But you also wanted me, too.”

“Duh.”

Guillermo sighs. “Eleven years.”

“Eleven years.”

“It wasn’t all bad, though. All these nights, drinking together.”

Nandor draws Guillermo closer to him, pondering. At length, Nandor ventures, for the first time ever, a quiet “ _salud_.” The word sounds simultaneously strange and devastatingly sexy on his lips.

“ _Salud_ ,” returns Guillermo, entwining his fingers with Nandor’s. And they drift off to sleep.


End file.
